Infographic | Electoral bonds in numbers

During the 30 phases of the sale till this January, electoral bonds worth Rs 16,518.10 crore were sold and of this, Rs 4,794.68 crore or 29.02% were sold during the four phases between January and May 2019 before the Lok Sabha elections that year.

New Delhi: Close to 30 per cent of bond sale so far took place just before the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 and the Supreme Court’s verdict scrapping the controversial financial instrument has come just ahead of the next round of general elections that may impact funding modes for parties.

An analysis of sale since February 2018 has shown that the ruling BJP is the major beneficiary of electoral bonds as audit reports showed that it got Rs 6,566.11 crore till March 2023 – 54.68 per cent of bonds worth Rs 12,007.72 crore sold till then – while Congress was a distant second with Rs 1,123.29 crore or 9.35 per cent.

During the 30 phases of the sale till this January, electoral bonds worth Rs 16,518.10 crore were sold and of this, Rs 4,794.68 crore or 29.02 per cent were sold during the four phases between January and May 2019 before the Lok Sabha elections that year.

Except for Rs 9.05 crore, all bonds sold during this five-month period were encashed by the beneficiary political parties. Analysing the sale during 30 phases between February 2018 and January this year, bonds worth around Rs 25.10 crore, including were not encashed.

Ahead of the conclusion of Lok Sabha polls in 2019, there were four phases of elections – between January 1 and 10, March 1 and 15, April 1 and 20 and May 6 and 10. In a Lok Sabha election year, the law provided for special windows for bond sale.

The highest sale for the whole 30 phases was also during the 2019 April 1-20 period when bonds worth Rs 2,256.37 crore were sold. Bonds worth Rs 350.36 crore were sold in the January 2019 phase while the March 2019 window saw a sale of Rs 1,365.69 crore and Rs 822.26 crore in May 2019.

The analysis showed that the electoral bonds majorly benefitted the ruling BJP, an allegation continuously levelled by the Opposition, including the Congress which argued that the electoral bonds would become the most significant enabler of what are known as quid-pro-quo deals.

The CPI(M) was the only national party not to accept donations through electoral bonds while other Opposition parties opposed it but accepted money via the controversial financial instrument.

The audit reports showed that the BJP got Rs 210 crore in 2017-18 when the electoral bond scheme was introduced while Congress got just Rs five crore. BJP got Rs 1,450.89 crore, Rs 2,555 crore, Rs 22.38 crore, Rs 1,033.70 crore and Rs 1,294.14 crore in the next fiscals.

Congress got Rs 383.26 crore in 2018-19 while in the next fiscals, it got Rs 317.86 crore, Rs 10.07 crore, Rs 236.09 crore and Rs 171.01 crore.